Nico Gleirscher wins quadruple triumph for Austrian men

Innsbruck (FIL/04 Dec 2022) The men's team of Austria's new head coach Christian Eigentler continued on the second Sunday of Advent in Igls where his women's and doubles teams had left off yesterday: the men started the new FIL EBERSPÄCHER World Cup season with a quadruple victory. Nico Gleirscher triumphed ahead of Wolfgang Kindl (+0.044 sec.), Jonas Müller (+0.095 sec.) and his older brother David Gleirscher (+0.216 sec.). Olympic bronze medallist Dominik Fischnaller (ITA, +0.235 sec.) finished fifth, followed by US American Jonathan Gustafson (+0.667 sec.).

It was already clear in the first run that the three would decide the victory among themselves. They each set track records and went through the Olympic track as if they were on rails. After the first run, Wolfgang Kindl, silver medal winner in Beijing 2022, was still in third place and passed Jonas Müller with the fastest time in the second run. Nico Gleirscher took home the victory after his 49.539 seconds track record in the first run and celebrated the second World Cup victory of his career.

With seventh place at his World Cup debut, Timon Grancagnolo from Chemnitz convinced. The 19-year-old, who placed third at the Youth Olympic Games 2020, had joined the German team at short notice to replace his injured teammate Max Langenhan. He showed two strong runs and was the best German in the end. Three-time Olympic champion Felix Loch was in sixth place after the first run, raced fully on the attack in the second run and crashed shortly before the finish in turn 14, dropping back to 15th place overall. Satisfied, on the other hand, was 22-year-old Leon Felderer from Latzfons, who had set a top-10 finish as his goal after winning the Nations Cup. In the end, he finished ninth.

Stimmen:

Nico Gleirscher (AUT): “We have already seen at the Austrian Championship that we have a great speed and that we fight amazingly in the team. That's why this victory today is incredible, but deserved. We were laughing early on today that the doubles had quite a lead, but we followed up quite well with our quadruple victory. We all work together, no one has secrets from each other, and it was great to be able to present ourselves as a team like that today.”

Wolfgang Kindl (AUT): “In the first run I overpaced a bit, but I did well in the second. The revance against Nico is right now in the sprint.”

Timon Grancagnolo (GER): “I am very satisfied. I still made small mistakes and the start performance was not the best, but in itself I am satisfied. Now I am looking forward to Whistler. It's the first time for me to travel to North America and I'm very keen to get to know new tracks. I think Whistler will suit me better because you go faster there.”

The results of the 1st Men's World Cup of the 2022/23 season are available at the following link: https://www.fil-luge.org/de/ergebnisse/eberspaecher-weltcup-19